Bust Drawing Project at the Detroit Institute of Arts

Recently I took one of my Drawing I classes to the Detroit Institute of Arts for a bust drawing project. While we usually do perspective drawing in there, this was later in the semester and we were working on portraits.  So I gave them a project to choose and draw one of the many busts the DIA is famous for.  Certainly one of the best collections in North America!

Given that there are so many busts made of so many different materials, I left the medium for the assignment open so they could match their chosen bust with the best possible combination of drawing tools and paper.  I helped them with these choices so they could best recreate marble, bronze, wood or any of the numerous materials they might find them in.  This offered the chance for several to experience completely new-to-them mediums.

It was a combination of field trip, studio and home work.  They were started from life in the museum to capture the gesture and create a strong composition.  The bulk of the project was handled from high-quality photographs, and we went back to the museum for final details and textures.  Here are a few highlights! Keep in mind, these are Drawing I students!!!!

 Pastel and charcoal on paper, 25"X19"

 Charcoal on paper, 19"X25"

Conte and pastel on paper, 25"X19"

15 artworks at 5 galleries around the country. Then the ones that don't sell come back around Mid-March and I hang a solo show and include some of my work in the drawing exhibition I am curating. What a fun ride this is....

An Exhibition Opening and Award Kind of Weekend!

Last weekend I had the chance to travel to Oregon and attend the opening of Au Naturel: The Nude in the 21st Century.  This is a wonderful international juried exhibition that I have had work in 7 of the last 8 years.  Last year, I won first place and they purchased my winning work, so I figured this should be the year I finally get out there to attend the opening.

Always a stunning show online, it was a pure pleasure to see this year's work at the very fine Royal Nebeker Gallery on the campus of Clatsop Community College.  I finally got to meet Kristin Shauck, the founder and director of Au Naturel, someone I have communicated with several times over the years.  I was surprised to be presented as the Second Place winner given the depth of the competition there.  But with this I have won a First, Second and Third place over the last three years in the competition.

I had the chance to thank Kristin in person for putting this show on, telling her this was one of the big inspirations that help drive me to make work!  She said that was one of the best compliments she has heard about the show.   I have been in numerous shows around the country over the last 8 years or so, and usually I am so busy teaching I had never had a chance to see one.  Glad this was my first!

My Curator's Statement for Drawn to Creating, A Survey of Contemporary Drawing. Opening Aprill 22nd in the Lore Degenstein Gallery, Pennsylvania.

Drawing is often our first exploration of creativity. This can be seen in the artist in the studio, children exploring expression, or humanity discovering self. It is the most immediate act of creation and expression, the most in-depth act of observation, and the most direct form of imaging. Spurred by technological revolutions that have their foundations from its methods, drawing has become incredibly diverse, and as relevant and important as ever. 

Drawn to Creating: A Survey of Contemporary Drawing is an exhibition seeking to show, as much as a single exhibition can, the depth of what is happening in the current discipline of drawing. Considering work from the most academic to the most experimental, and from the formal to the conceptual, it presents drawing as an independent and expanding discipline.

The curator, Nick Reszetar, has chosen the works from his own research into, and love of, drawing. He will give a talk to discuss the depth of the work at the opening reception.